Torchlight Frontiers: Exclusive First Hands-On

Robots, pets, and shared worlds collide in the return of a venerable action RPG franchise.

By Jared Petty

Speedy, lively, bright, and action-packed, Torchlight Frontiers impressed me. I almost resented the relatively compressed size of the demo slice, and found myself hungry to play more when time expired, randomly walking about and thwacking monsters for several minutes after beating the boss just for the tactile joy of the brawling.

Torchlight Frontiers feels like a proper Torchlight game, and that’s what I wanted. It’s an evolutionary take on Torchlight’s Diablo-inspired formula, a game defined by the little things: subtle monster animations, clever lighting effects, fantastic art direction, and that elusive hook of fight, loot, upgrade, repeat. But while Frontiers revisits all the best of the tried-and-true action RPG staples, it’s also trying some new things.

Get your first look at Torchlight Frontiers in action with the gameplay trailer above.

Torchlight’s action-RPG environments have traditionally been concentrated in two areas: statically-designed towns where players shop, craft, and rearm, and procedurally-generated dungeons where individual heroes or small parties hunt monsters and find loot. Torchlight: Frontiers adds a third type of area: wider public spaces where larger groups of players can mingle MMO-style fighting respawning enemies, partying up, and banding together to descend into the deeper darkness of a procedurally-generated dungeon beneath. The change is part of Torchlight’s shift toward a game-as-a-service philosophy and shared world design.

In the online space, there's no need for too much chit chat, let's just go kill some bad guys.

A scaled-down version of one of these areas will be on display at Gamescom this week when Torchlight Frontiers makes its public gameplay debut. The developers plan for these areas to eventually become shared space for special community events, as well as serving as common ground for traversal and mingling with crowds.

I didn’t have much opportunity to observe the multiplayer aspect of the game firsthand as I didn’t experience much of it... I only encountered one other player, a Dusk Mage piloted by a developer, in one of the shared areas. I’m not exactly the most social of online gamers, so I was happy to discover the interaction didn’t feel obtrusive at all. In fact, I instinctually latched onto my fellow player’s path and started following her around and attacking groups of monsters in the weaving lanes of a goblin encampment. I could easily see myself adopting similar behavior in a larger online space. It felt natural... no need for too much chit chat, let’s just go kill some bad guys (though the devs promised that communications options will be available in release versions).

Torchlight’s strange, bright art has always been one of its strengths, and that tradition is on full-display in Frontiers. The vibe is a sort of cross between rounded organics and steampunk aesthetics, all clad in borderline-garish color, and it looks fantastic. It’s the kind of world I’d want to spend a lot of time in. Nothing is too serious: this is, after all, a game that features dressing up robots in funny hats. According to the developers, there will be lots of opportunities to customize the look and feel of your character in distinctive ways based on the gear you're finding. Enemy types vary in outdoor shared spaces along a day night cycle, with zany goblins gradually supplanted by shambling zombies as the sun went down. I also encountered minable materials obviously intended for a yet-to-be-revealed crafting system.

Torchlight's strange, bright art has always been one of its strengths, and that tradition is on full-display in Frontiers.

So much of a good action RPG is the little things, and I saw plenty of evidence of this in the Frontiers demo. Goblins wielded enormous blunderbusses that threw them to the ground when fired. Enemies popped into little globs of cartoon flesh when I landed a good swipe of my mechanical arms. Despite my choice to play with a mouse and keyboard with no force feedback, I swear I could feel the impact of hits as enemy mobs chipped away at me, (and yes, controller support is also built in).

Torchlight Has Class

So far, Echtra’s only revealing two classes for Torchlight Frontiers. I chose to play as The Forge, an adorable steampunk quadruped robot that looked something like a combat-repurposed Wall-E on spider legs. His central torso included an equipment slot for an imbedded cannon. I instantly felt comfortable aiming the weapon and rapidly traversing the twisting dungeon pathways.

The Forge’s mana meter differed from the conventional blue bubble of a Torchlight MP reserve. Instead, I kept half an eye on a Heat Gauge that slowly built up as I used my special powers. When I hit an overheated state I could no longer fire off my best attacks, but I also got a chance to release my stored-up incendiary energy in a colossal area effect attack that sucked nearby enemies into a wall of flames and restored my arsenal of abilities.

Even at this early stage of development, there’s evidence of thoughtful craftsmanship in the handling of my hero. Spinning my arms around me in a 360-degree arc while tumbling forward, I plowed through mobs with a tactile sensation of gravity and momentum. The Forge’s crawl had an insectile quality more adorable than creepy, and practically all of my abilities felt situationally useful, though thanks to a very lucky Legendary equipment drop early in the demo I found myself relying heavily on a long range machine gun.

Even at this early stage of development, there's evidence of thoughtful craftsmanship in the handling of my hero.

I also observed play by the Dusk Mage class. Her light and dark themed powers each had a distinctive characteristic: light themed attacks were orderly and precise, dark-themed attacks were chaotic and area-effect oriented. Using light powers charged up the ability to unleash more darkness, while spamming darkness powered up the light. I love the sort of Ikaruga-vibe the character gave off.

And of course, pets are coming back. Pets have long been an integral part of Torchlight, running back to town to exchange items for gold, fighting alongside you, and wielding customized powers, but their implementation in Torchlight Frontiers is still in the early stages, and I saw little of what the specific plans are for furry companions this time around. The developers assured me that there are lots of ideas in the works, and it’s obvious they understand the beloved status pets hold with fans of the series. They’re developing new ways to use pets, and that we can likely expect incentives to encourage individual players to develop and groom multiple animals. So far, three pets are being revealed: an alpaca, a dog, and an owl, each with changeable color schemes.

Retooling Levels

Perhaps even more impactful than Torchlight’s shift to shared world multiplayer is the radical change in Torchlight’s approach to character advancement. Dungeons still hide Gold useful for buying all kinds of things. Monsters also drop Skill Points for purchasing a variety of slottable, interchangeable active and passive abilities to personalize a character’s attributes. But more radically, the traditional RPG concept of advancing player character levels has been completely laid aside in favor of an item level, an aggregate value determined by the quality of equipment a player is currently packing.

Dungeons are likewise marked by corresponding challenge levels. When a player is trying to determine whether a particular dungeon might be too easy or too difficult, they compare their aggregate item level to the dungeon challenge level. If the levels are close, the dungeon is probably a good challenge.

If I spend time helping low-level friends, I'm still reaping useful amounts of meaningful resources.

Why the change away from player character levels? In a shared world, Echtra wanted to make sure that players of unequal experience and power level could still have fun playing together and reap meaningful rewards. So if I’m item level 10 and I want to go exploring with my less-well equipped and inexperienced item level 3 buddy, I simply team up with her and enter a low-level dungeon comparable to her gear. All my gear is temporarily scaled back to a lower level proportional to the dungeon’s challenge while we journey together, but I bring along my unique skills and the custom flavor of my abilities. I’m still powerful, just not dominant, and I can help my friend while still enjoying a reasonable challenge.

And while low-level dungeons drop low-level gear that’s not going to be super-useful to me, the economy of Gold and Skill Point drops are fairly consistent between dungeons of all levels in Torchlight Frontiers. So if I opt to spend time helping low-level friends, I’m still reaping useful amounts of some meaningful resources that will help make my character more powerful when I head back to higher-level areas.

Echtra also wants to emphasize variety, teasing undisclosed incentives for players building up more than one type of character and building collections of more than one type of pet. There’s not a lot about the revenue model decided as of yet, but one thing the creators want to be crystal clear on is their understanding that in Torchlight, loot is something that should be primarily earned by fighting monsters and exploring dungeons, so don’t expect an auction house or trading that devalues the loot economy.

My early look at Torchlight Frontiers convinced me the experienced creators (many of whom are Torchlight and Diablo development veterans) deeply understand what makes their games tick, and I walked away optimistic that this live-service take on the action RPG has real potential to succeed. Torchlight Frontiers is targeted for 2019 availability on PC followed by Xbox One and PS4 releases, and will be available to play at Gamescom and PAX West.

Jared Petty produces Red Dead Radio: The Red Dead Redemption Podcast, Hop, Blip, and a Jump, and Pockets Full of Soup. He's a host at Kinda Funny Games and a frequent contributor to IGN. Follow him on Twitter @pettycommajared and on Instagram @pettycommajared.